I'm pondering the following quotation by Gerald May (whom I've long admired and who left us far too soon). I find myself thinking of this principle in light of past events, my own resistance, and God's providence:
"God is always working obscurely within us. And, even more mysteriously, some part of us is saying yes to God's invitations to go where we do not want to go."
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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Here's something I found on Facebook and I want to assert that it's very good:
"Some hurts are splinters in the soul, memories embedded, a sliver of pain that has worked itself under the skin. We can carry them with us for years. The problem is that they rarely work themselves out. Over time they can get infected. Bitterness is their by-product. An inability to forgive their symptom. It is never easy to take a soul splinter out. We flinch at the idea of re-visiting something we would as soon forget. But with holy patience, spiritual courage, and the steady hand of the Spirit, we can slowly release their injury and be free of their wound."
-- Bishop Steven Charleston
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"The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged-- keep on-- there are divine things, well envelop'd; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell."
~Walt Whitman
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So very, very beautiful:
"Silence is the mother of everything that has come out from the Depth. And Silence kept quiet about what she was unable to describe: the Unspeakable."
Whatever you may happen to think of the Templars, this is absolutely gorgeous.
I'm focusing most of my reflections today on the material in a little book entitled The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello.
De Mello was a Jesuit priest, a retreat conductor and a psychotherapist. I have enormous respect for all that he wrote and taught. Here's something that caught my attention this morning:
"Mostly the discontent you feel comes from not having enought of something -- you are dissatisfied because you think you do not have enough money or power or success or fame or virtue or love, or holiness. This is not the discontent that leads to the joy of the Kingdon. Its source is greed and ambition and its fruit is restlessness and frustration. The day you are discontented not because you want more of something but without knowing what it is you want; when you are sick at heart of everything that you have been pursuing so far and you are sick of the pursuit istself, then you heart will attain a great clarity, an insight that will cause you mysteriously to delight in everthing and in nothing."
Wonderful paradoxes here, no?
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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Oh, this passage by Thomas Merton is so, so beautiful. As much as I once wished for it, the life he describes here has not turned out to be my year-round, routine, life vocation. But I've had enough extended periods like this to cherish its value very deeply indeed:
"To deliver oneself up, hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide landscape of woods and hill, or sea, or desert: to sit still while the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light. To pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who are willing to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence."
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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I like this and I agree with it:
"Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair."
-- Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The following is something Henri Nouwen said and, given what we know about some of his inner struggles, he certainly knew what he was talking about. I do really value his assertion here that, although we may not be able to escape some of the struggles that plague us, we don't have to belong to them:
Hardly a day passes in our lives without our experience of inner or outer fears, anxieties, apprehensions and preoccupations. These dark powers have pervaded every part of our world to such a degree that we can never fully escape them. Still it is possible not to belong to these powers, not to build our dwelling place among them, but to choose the house of love as our home. This choice is made not just once and for all but by living a spiritual life, praying at all times and thus breathing God’s breath. Through the spiritual life we gradually move from the house of fear to the house of love.
By the way, I had the privilege of hearing Nouwen give a series of lectures back in the 70s. It was one of the most memorable occasions of my life - one for which I remain very, very grateful.
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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The following really spoke to me this morning:
"We understand that ordinary people are messengers of the Most High. They go about their tasks in holy anonymity. Often, even unknown to themselves. Yet, if they had not been there, if they had not said what they said or did what they did, it would not be the way it is now. We sould not be the way we are now. Never forget that you too yourself may be a messenger."
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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Madeleine L'Engle had a huge influence on me as a young person and also as a grown-up - particularly with regard to teaching. I had the privilege of hearing her speak and meeting her personally back in the late 70s -- a very memorable occasion!
A facebook friend posted the following today by L'Engle and I think it's truly worthy of reflection:
"How do we learn to bless, rather than damn, those with whom we disagree, those whom we fear, those who are different? ... All of Creation groans in travail. All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.... To look for hell, not heaven, is a kind of blasphemy, for we are called to live in hope."
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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Here's something quite wonderful by Thomas Merton:
“The only way to get rid of misconceptions about contemplation is to experience it. One who does not actually know, in his own life, the nature of this breakthrough and this awakening to a new level of reality cannot help being misled by most of the things that are said about it. For contemplation cannot be taught. It cannot even be clearly explained. It can only be hinted at, suggested, pointed to, symbolized. The more objectively and scientifically one tries to analyze it, the more he empties it of its real content, for this experience is beyond the reach of verbalization and of rationalization."
- from New Seeds of Contemplation
Here's a passage from a book entitled Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood. The author's name is Wayne Muller.
"If the eye is clear, said Jesus, our body will be full of light. When our attention is receptive and accepting, everything we see may become an object of meditation, a source of teaching. Even the most difficult and painful feelings and emotions, as we experience their arising in the present, can become teachers and companions for us. According to Kabir, the fifteenth-century Indian poet, 'When the eyes and ears are open, even the leaves on the trees teach like pages from the scriptures.' "
Maybe it would not be a bad idea this Lent to reflect a bit on the power of words. I hear many people minimize the seriousness of their own words toward others under the rubric that they were stressed out or that they didn't really mean something that was truly unkind or hurtful. That concerns me. Here's something that Sylvia Boorstein says on the matter:
"I read a sentence in a magazine years ago, a page filler added to the bottom of a column because the article wasn't quite long enough. I don't recall what magazine it was or what the article was about, but I remember the sentence. It said, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can always harm me.'
"Sometimes, in a class, I will say, 'Raise your hand if you have ever broken a bone.' After people raise their hands, I say, 'Leave your hand up if that bone still hurts you now.' Usually, all the hands come down. Then I say, 'Raise your hand if you still feel pain from something someone said to you in the past year.' Lots of hands go up. 'Keep your hand up if you have pain from a remark someone made about you in the last five years.' Hands stay up. 'Last ten years . . . twenty years . . . thirty years . . . a remark made before you were five years old.' Many people still have an arm in the air. They look around at each other and smile, sheepishly, but I don't think anyone is amused. It is a lovely moment of shared compassion, of being a witness to the burden we have all borne of carrying the pain of hurtful remarks. Perhaps we think that if we are mature adults we should have gotten over the rebukes of childhood. I wonder if we ever do. I think we are all quite vulnerable, like cream puffs, crisp on the outside but fragile inside and very sweet."
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One of my Facebook friends posted the following this morning. I do beg you to read it. It's very moving. (I'm re-posting this with her permission.)
Ranier Maria Rilke: “Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence.”
We took a walk once the warmer weather began.
It was in one of the mini parks that are maintained in our town with a few boulders and barren trees. It was one of those times where no one was talking. We stop in front of one of the spindly trees and look at it. I don’t know if it was the desolation of the space or what but one of the youth started talking about his day. “It was bad yesterday. Everything tasted flat and there was a lot of yelling. I don’t know. I just felt like going back to bed and staying there. I tried praying but it was like there was only emptiness. I really wanted God to be there,” he ended with a plaintive tone.
Fascinated, a teen asks, “What’s it like when God is there?”
“You know,” responds the first speaker. “It’s like someone is listening and telling me that I can go on. I can’t explain it.”
I ask, “What is the difference between emptiness and silence in a prayer?”
Several attempts were made before one youth says, “Have you ever been on your cell and you are talking to someone and then you realize that no one is listening and your call has been cut off. It is not like someone is silent while you are speaking. You are just talking into nowhere. You can tell there is no one at the other end.” We laugh since we have all had that experience.
“That describes emptiness but not silence,” I say. “Were any of you uncomfortable when we were walking without talking at the beginning of the park?”
“Not for me,” declares a teen. “I was sorting through my thoughts and just looking around. We didn’t have to say anything.”
“Sometimes in prayer, it is helpful to just be open to the silence and not expect anything, especially when you don’t know what to say or imagine,” I offer. “It may feel like emptiness because you are trying to force a response rather than waiting. Praying in silence is one of the hardest holy practices we do because we are not in control of the conversation. It’s when we open ourselves up and wait.”
An older youth adds this, “I had one of those conversations with my girl. She told me she liked it when we just sat together not saying anything. And I was killing myself trying to think of something to say.” This got a big laugh.
“What did she mean?” asks one of the young ones. “I think she means that sometimes we are comfortable just sitting with each other and not having to fill in the blanks,” he replied. “But I remember also when I sat with one of my friends who had been slapped around and thrown out of his house. I didn’t have anything to say so I just sat with him. Later he thanked me for not trying to tell him something. He just couldn’t stand words at that time. It made me think. I usually fill up my prayers with a lot of talk. Maybe I could use more silence.”
I told them about the Quaker practice of prayer in silence and we tried it. No one said anything when I said amen but there were a lot of thoughtful expressions. Perhaps this Lent we are called to listen more.
In faith, Kaze
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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Here's a lovely and brief article by an obviously thoughtful Jesuit:
For Lent: The Best Advice I've Ever Heard
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I really do love the story shared at the beginning of this passage by Cynthia Bourgeault:
"A nun, after her first try at centering prayer during a workshop led by Thomas Keating, came up to him in great frustration. 'I’m such a failure at this prayer,' she said. 'In twenty minutes of sitting I've had ten thousand thoughts.'
" 'How lovely,' Fr. Keating responded, without so much as batting an eye. 'Ten thousand opportunities to return to God!'
"And that is the essence of centering prayer. The 'magic' of this prayer is not attained by keeping the mind perfectly still or clear. It happens in each moment you catch yourself thinking and are willing to let that thought go as a symbol of your consent to open up fully, let go of your own stuff, and simply hold a space of total availability given to God as a free gift of your love for the duration of the prayer period."
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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It's very possible that I have posted these wonderful lines by Hafiz here before. Nevertheless, they are on my mind again today and so I offer the following:
Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.
I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in the darkness, the astonishing light of your own being.
(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)
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How rich, lovely, consoling, energizing:
Effortlessly,
Love flows from God into humanity,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings—
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.-- Mechtild of Magdeburg, 13th century
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